Category: News and Events

Professor Brett Kahr

PROFESSOR BRETT KAHR’S LATEST BOOK

AND “IN CONVERSATION” EVENT WITH SUSANNA ABSE.

The Balint Consultancy is delighted to announce that Professor Brett Kahr has just published his eighteenth book, entitled Hidden Histories of British Psychoanalysis:  From Freud’s Death Bed to Laing’s Missing Tooth, which appears as one of the inaugural titles in the “Freud Museum London Series”, published by Karnac Books.

On Friday, 17^th November, 2023, at 4.00 p.m., Professor Kahr will have the opportunity to discuss this book “in conversation” with Susanna Abse, the former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a current Trustee of Freud Museum London, at Sigmund Freud’s old home at 20, Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX.

Here is the link to the event:

And here is the link to the publisher’s website:

https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/hidden-histories-of-british-psychoanalysis-from-freuds-death-bed-to-laing/96947/

And here are the endorsements for the book, written by several esteemed members of the psychoanalytical community:

BOOK ENDORSEMENTS FOR PROFESSOR KAHR’S NEW TITLE.

“Based upon painstaking archival research and personal interviews with the London glitterati of psychoanalysis (e.g., John Bowlby, Enid Balint, Pearl King, R.D. Laing), Brett Kahr, the most eloquent, enlightened, and entertaining historian of psychoanalysis, offers us yet another masterpiece.  Replete with luminous and dark glimpses into the development of psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom and into the virtuosity and whims, even madnesses, of his dramatis personae, Kahr’s book is as informative as it is a pleasure to read!”

Professor Salman Akhtar, M.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, whose many books include Tales of Transformation:  A Life in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and, more recently, the multi-volume Selected Papers of Salman Akhtar.

*

“This is a very sneaky book.  Ostensibly it is a series of tales from the history of Anglophone psychoanalysis in the twentieth century.  But, in reality, it is a readable, often funny, account by the best historian of psychoanalysis of his generation, Brett Kahr.  As much autobiography as historical account, it shows what happens when a brilliant mind meets an intractable object.  The essay on the young student Brett Kahr and R. D. Laing’s missing tooth is itself worth the price of the volume, and has the possibility of becoming the classic essay on the pitfalls of celebrity.”

Professor Sander L. Gilman, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Emory University, and author of numerous books, including Seeing the Insane:  A Cultural History of Madness and Art in the Western World and The Case of Sigmund Freud:  Medicine and Identity at the Fin de Siècle.

*

“Using storytelling, clinical and research tools, Brett Kahr’s sorcery brings to life several well-known personalities in the British psychoanalytic panoply – its “superstars” as well as its “bad boys”.  While profoundly respectful, Kahr’s thoughtful critique of rigorously sourced archival papers, oral history research, and personal interviews rewards the readers with much wisdom and inspiration from foundational figures of psychoanalysis.”

Professor Joan Raphael-Leff, Ph.D., Retired Professor of Psychoanalysis at University College London and at the University of Essex, and Leader of the Academic Faculty of Psychoanalytic Research at the Anna Freud Centre, whose many books include Between Sessions and Beyond the Couch, and, more recently, The Marion Milner Tradition:  Lines of Development:  The Evolution of Theory and Practice Over the Decades.

*

“Brett Kahr has earned a reputation as the eminent narrator and in-depth analyst of the vagaries and the most protracted motifs that animate the legacy of psychoanalysis.  In an engaging and well-documented fashion, Kahr takes us back to the contingent elements that, together, gave psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom its inescapable force and necessary radiance.  Kahr’s Hidden Histories is a labour of love that in its caring attentiveness humanises the great figures on whose shoulders it stands.  Highly readable and greatly enticing, this latest addition to the Freud Museum’s and Karnac’s new promising series, will speak to professionals, historians, and the wider public alike.”

Professor Orna Ophir, Ph.D., Associate Director of The DeWitt Wallace Institute for Psychiatry, Weill-Cornell Medical College, New York, and a Member of the History of Psychoanalysis Committee of the International Psychoanalytical Association, and author of Schizophrenia:  An Unfinished History.

Susie Orbach

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